Tag Archives: hummingbirds

This August I’ll be co-leading the semiannual Hummingbirds of Arizona Tour for the Southeastern Arizona Bird Observatory. The 7-day, 6-night itinerary starts and ends in Tucson and covers the top hummingbird destinations in this hummingbird-rich corner of the Southwest: Madera Canyon, Patagonia, the San Pedro River, the Huachuca Mountains, and Cave Creek Canyon. Our featured lodging will be Casa de San Pedro Bed & Breakfast, a beautiful and extremely comfortable inn adjacent to the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area that is the location of one of SABO’s two hummingbird banding stations.

Up to 15 hummingbird species are possible in mid-August, including southwestern specialties such as Lucifer, Magnificent, and Violet-crowned; southbound Calliope, Rufous, and Allen’s; and, with luck, irregular wanderers from Mexico such as White-eared and Plain-capped Starthroat. Though hummingbirds will be the focus of this tour, we won’t neglect the songbirds, birds of prey, butterflies, wildflowers, and other natural treasures that make this corner of Arizona such a popular destination for birders and naturalists of every stripe. Our field trips will cover a wide range of habitats, from the cactus forests of the Sonoran Desert to the cool pine-fir forests atop our “sky island” mountains.

My co-leader will be my husband and colleague Tom Wood (right), founder and director of SABO, and we’re looking forward to showing a small group of hummingbird admirers around our favorite birding destinations while sharing some of what we’ve learned about hummingbird identification, behavior, ecology, and conservation.

If you’re saying to yourself, “Arizona in August? Is she insane??” hear me out. August is the lushest, greenest month of the year in southeastern Arizona. Monsoon thunderstorms that begin in early July create a “second spring,” bringing the deserts and canyons to life with birds, butterflies, and wildflowers. It’s also the peak of hummingbird migration, when maximum numbers and species diversity are present.

The tour is August 13-19 (Sunday-Saturday) and follows the Southeast Arizona Birding Festival in Tucson. The limit is 8 participants, so reserve your spot now! For more details and/or to make a reservation, please visit the tour page at SABO’s Web site.

The best way to follow the spring migration of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds is the map at hummingbirds.net, but if you also follow eBird you might notice that sightings posted there tend to lag a bit behind. This annual discrepancy became a full-blown controversy in 2012, when sightings reported to hummingbirds.net galloped far ahead not only of eBird but of any similar period since 1996, the year hummingbirds.net creator Lanny Chambers began tracking Ruby-throated spring migration.

The reasons behind the 2012 discrepancy had more to do with different birding styles than with that spring’s odd weather or the birds themselves. To clear the air and build a bridge between the mainstream birding and hummingbird specialist communities, I wrote an analysis for the May 2014 issue of the American Birding Association‘s Birder’s Guide to Conservation and Community. Whether you’re not yet a member of ABA or missed that issue of the Birder’s Guide, you can read “Parallel Universes” for free right here (page 46).

Thanks to Birder’s Guide editor Michael Retter and all the hardworking folks who make ABA such a great organization, and to Lanny Chambers and his dedicated network of hummingbird watchers.

Have any scientific studies been conducted to determine the effects of these chemicals on hummingbirds?

Some people are surprised to learn that the answer is an emphatic “NO.” Despite oft-repeated (and oft-debunked) urban legends that the San Diego Zoo, Audubon Society, or some other trustworthy source tested red dye on hummingbirds and found one or more specific effects (liver damage, kidney damage, cancer, tumors, “birth defects,” weakened eggshells, or, in some versions of the story, no harm at all), there is no evidence that any such testing has ever been conducted on hummingbirds by anyone anywhere.

Considering the challenges of such a study, direct testing of dyes on hummingbirds is not likely to happen:

Hummingbirds, like most wild birds, are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and various state laws, and animal research is subject to its own set of federal, state, and institutional regulations, so the first hurdle would be to get all the necessary permits and permissions to capture wild hummingbirds, confine them at a research facility, and perform lethal testing on them.

Getting the permits would require the researchers to prove that they could provide proper housing and care for the duration of the study. Hummingbirds are difficult and expensive to house and feed, and it could cost many thousands of dollars to keep dozens of them alive and otherwise healthy for the duration of testing.

The size and composition of the study population is very important. If the number of birds is too small, the results may not be clear, or critics may dismiss them as not statistically significant. If only one species is tested, critics may argue that the results may not apply to other hummingbirds. If only males are tested, critics may contend that the dye could affect females differently or not at all and therefore have little effect on populations.

To document the effects of dye consumption on the birds, the researchers would have to “sacrifice” and dissect them. It would be difficult to find qualified researchers interested enough in hummingbirds to perform such a study, qualified to undertake or supervise daily care of dozens of captives, and willing to kill them all to get the data. Imagine, too, how the hummingbird-loving public would react to learning that dozens of hummingbirds had been taken from the wild, dosed with dyes, killed, and dissected, even if the results might help to protect the health and safety of millions of other hummingbirds.

“Skeptics” who insist that such studies are required to “prove” that petroleum-based artificial dyes harm hummingbirds are setting the bar far higher than we do for our own health. No one in their right mind would suggest that we evaluate the safety of food additives, drugs, etc. by exposing human subjects to potentially harmful doses. Instead, we rely on the results of testing on lab animals and cell cultures to indicate whether and how various chemicals may affect human health.

Just because artificial dyes have never been tested on hummingbirds doesn’t mean they’ve never been tested. In fact, there are plenty of published studies on the effects of FD&C Red No. 40 and FD&C Red No. 3 to help us make a compelling case against exposing hummingbirds to high doses of these dyes, without taking the life of a single bird.* The real challenges are to increase awareness of this evidence among backyard enthusiasts and persuade manufacturers of commercial “instant nectar” products to use safer alternatives.